


never had to battle with no bulletproof vest

by Fickle_Obsessions



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Fight Sex, Fighting Kink, Force Bond (Star Wars), Loss of Virginity, Pining, Roughness, Vaguely submissive tendencies, Virgin Kylo Ren, Virgin Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 11:11:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13363458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fickle_Obsessions/pseuds/Fickle_Obsessions
Summary: Rey is the only one in Kylo Ren's incomplete life to grab his wrist, to dig a shoulder into his body, to exhale her breath against his skin, and live to do it again.Alternately: Kylo and Rey are two virgins who can't figure out if they want to kill each other or fuck each other and I'm into it.





	never had to battle with no bulletproof vest

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a simple woman with simple needs, and I left The Last Jedi with simply _needing_ to see these two fight some and kiss a lot. This is heavy on the smut, light on the plot, mid-range with the feels. 
> 
> A note about pronouns, rather than come down on the side of how Ben or Kylo really sees himself, I just use "he" wherever possible. 
> 
> Also the title comes from the Sublime song with the lyrics I was too much of a chicken to actually use: Fucking, fighting it's all the same. 'Cause with these two it really is.

He is not a person that others can often get close to. Months can pass before he touches another being, and an even longer time will pass before someone reaches out to him. 

That's entirely by design. His every action is intended to make people afraid of him, to make them decide that getting within two paces of him is still just a little too close. He almost always prefers to threaten and kill with an arm held stiff in front of him. Certainly he will kill at close range if the situation calls for it, but he makes the moment as fleeting as possible. 

Rey is, as she always is, an exception. She's fearless when she presses into the air around him, close enough for him to notice small, unimportant things about her, her eyelashes, the way her lower jaw juts forward whenever she is angry or defiant, how the brown of her eyes nearly disappears when her eyes darken, again in anger, defiance. Each time it happens he catalogs these useless details without realizing it and at night a perfect image of the shape of her collarbone will suddenly come into his mind, always unbidden, sometimes unwanted.

Rey is the only one in Kylo Ren's incomplete life to grab his wrist, to dig a shoulder into his body, to exhale her breath against his skin, and live to do it again. First in the woods of Starkiller base, again in the throne room, and then again, and again. 

Circumstances keep finding ways for them to fight each other face to face. On a half dozen ragged, empty or abandoned planets Rey has ended up too close, as she is now, pressed up against him with her lightsaber burning next to his ear, one leg hooked around his knee trying to upset his balance. He can smell the scent of her hair, hear each breath she takes, and feel that no matter how hard he shoves at her she won't be moved. 

They've been fighting too long for any sort of creativity. The have nothing now but the brute strength of their respective wills to rely on. He's giving everything he has just to stay upright, stay breathing, to hold her at bay, and she's doing the same. Behind Rey he can see the sun is going down, sinking slowly into a flat, featureless horizon. 

Casting about for some desperate idea, some way out, he finds nothing. He just keeps returning to the lightsaber too close to his neck, and brief, random glimpses of the curve of her cheek, her neck where it disappears into her collar, of how there is no space between them. None of that helps him, in fact it makes his breathing shallower, faster, that much less helpful to him. 

Perhaps because of the drop in oxygen, his thoughts get more wild, and the question he asks himself is not how to survive, but whether she is bothered by the same distractions. She's got her head down, staring at the red hilt of his saber and how close it is to her thigh, and he stares at her, wishing she would look up. 

He forgets that she can hear him, even though he so often hears her. She looks up just as the thought solidifies in his mind, and they are too close. He tries to pull back but there is nowhere to go, they are too tightly tangled. Rey, her chin jutting forward in that same infuriating defiance, only gets closer, long neck straining so that he can see the tendons running down to her collarbone. The question is clear on her face, is this what you wanted?

He does everything he can not to think the words, not to feel them in the back of his mind, but it comes anyway: the unformed desire of _I want._ A small hitch in her breath, a choked gasp tells him she senses it. All he can do now is search her for the answer, but the trouble with the bond is it leaves no time to react. Rey senses his thoughts, he reaches out in an attempt to discern the shape of the white-hot ball of emotions she never thinks to conceal, and then the wave is already breaking. 

He senses her intent at practically the same time she is moving to carry it through and his body moves without thinking, exactly as it would do if he was anticipating the arc of her swing at him. He lifts his chin, and drops his shoulders and gives her a clear to path to crash their mouths together, hard. In each of their hands their lightsabers waver dangerously from the impact, and he senses her realization that she could kill him at the same time she feels the relief of finally sinking her teeth into his bottom lip. 

He is overwhelmed, incapable of weighing his two options -- staving off the threat of death and daring to touch Rey's waist, her hair -- against each other. In the end, the only thing that makes his decision is that the heat, and noise, and rattle of his saber are adding to his agitation. His thumb moves, and it goes mercifully silent. He lets it fall and his hand is now free his hand to touch the other objects of his distraction, first her hair, taking a fistful of it while regretting that he still wears his glove. Seeking a greater satisfaction, he drops his arm to wrap around his waist and does not even spare a thought for the fact that pulling her closer will singe his hair. 

When the acrid smell of the burning ends of his hair hits her nose, Rey finally relents, annoyed by it. She shuts her lightsaber down and discards it in favor of giving him a bruise on the back of his neck with how roughly she grabs it to drag him to her. 

They sway on unsteady feet, the wide stances meant for combat becoming too difficult to maintain as they try to find a way to devour each other. Their tendency to mirror each other undoes them, both deciding to shift to compensate at the same time, both unsure if it was their own idea to move or the other's. They work against each other and end up on the ground. Rey presses into his space immediately, climbing more or less into his lap and then past it, so that her knees are on either side of his waist and his upper body is tipped quite far back just to keep his mouth against hers. 

Soon enough the strain of holding himself at that angle stops being worth the reward. He breaks the kiss, and sits up to find her neck right there before him. He presses his mouth against it, sucks on the skin, and the noise she makes, that he can hear as well as feel beneath his lips, makes his fists clench tightly. The unexpected sound of fabric ripping announces that he has torn open the back of her shirt.

Instinct tells him to hesitate, to look up at Rey and read her face, but the bond doesn't stop roiling with energy, doesn't suddenly run cold. She meets his eyes as she shrugs her shoulders free of the ruined cloth, and he desperately starts pulling off his gloves because this is all a waste if he can't actually feel her. He spreads his palms over her spine and she bends down to kiss him again, still tugging at and discarding the last scraps of her shirt. When his hands move they find only hot skin, all along Rey’s back, over her shoulders and down her chest. Her breasts are unbelievably, incongruously soft, light handfuls with only the pucker of her nipples standing out against his palms, completely unlike the rest of her where soft skin is pulled over hard bone and muscle. 

Again she makes a noise, a keen in the back of her throat, and it occurs to him that the overwhelmed feeling flooding through their connection is not his alone. Not that it seems to matter who is feeling what, they're so jumbled together. He presses his lips to her jaw, her neck, then hefts her up, arms crossed beneath her thighs, to reach her collarbone before latching onto the breast sitting above her rapidly beating heart. 

Rey twists in his arms, pulls his hair, but he knows it's not to stop him. He doesn't feel a single 'no' anywhere in her thoughts, just disbelief and a growing indescribable need. She moves because she doesn't know what else to do and he can't begin to guess how to help that because to try would mean he would have to give up tasting her skin.

Too soon she decides she can't stand simply hanging there in his arms as he runs his tongue over her her nipple. She pushes his head away, shoves at his chest so that he lets her drop back down into his lap. She uses his shoulders to steady herself and he turns his face, seeking her mouth again but she avoids him, pulling instead at his collar. 

“What-” Rey grunts. “How does this work?” she tries to mimic his previous accident, pulling hard enough to hopefully tear his jacket, but the fabric is thicker and stronger than her cheap linens. 

He reluctantly lets go of her to guide her fingers to zipper hidden in the valley made by the fabric at his throat. She tugs it down and he undoes his belt, removing the obstacle that lies in its path. Her hot hands slip into his jacket and still she won't let him nuzzle his way to her mouth. She shoves it off his shoulders, finds the tunic underneath and frowns. She knows how to get that off at least, pulls it free from his waistband and lifts it up and over his head. 

She grants him several distracted kisses after that, but she's already searching his chest. Her left hand finds the scar that runs up from his shoulder to his face, and her right the pucker of skin where she stabbed her lightsaber in. Rey looks at them both, eyes moving from one to the other as she traces them. It's only the intensity of her expression that makes him understand that this is something she's wanted to do for a while. 

“Did you keep them because they're mine? Because I gave them to you?” 

The answer is, of course, yes, but he doesn't say it. He doesn't have to. He'd refused more careful healing because he'd meant it to be a lesson to himself, but they soon became one of the few things about his physical form he truly liked. He could touch them and think of her, remember how cruel she'd been, how ready to kill him. They helped him keep faith in the future that he saw, too long ago, when they touched on Ahch-to. 

“You are such a fool,” she says but it's not said in anger or pity so he allows it to pass without any answer from his pride. That she's bending her body down to put her lips on the round scar on his shoulder makes it that much easier to grant her the grace. She presses a kiss at first, but then her lips part and she's biting him, vicious in a way he couldn't be when he had his mouth on her breasts. 

He makes a noise that might sound like hurt but is anything but. He savors it, the scrape and pressure of her teeth, followed by her tongue dragging over the old scar tissue and the new indentions she's leaving on them. And while he does, he tries to comprehend that Rey has a list of her own with all the things she's wanted to do, and that unless there's some overlap they will have to trade turns trying them. He wonders how long they could have been doing this, but he knows the answer. 

Even now Hux and the rest of his miserable, mechanical army are on their way to dutifully save their Supreme Leader after he was foolish enough to be led into a trap by the girl he’s obsessed with. They landed on this rough, empty planet not long ago, and both their plans to destroy the other quickly came to nothing. They have just an hour, maybe less, left before they must make their respective escapes. It's still the longest they've ever been truly alone, their first opportunity and they're taking it. A sudden rush of impatience hits him and he insists on taking control again so that he can pull her hips hard against his. 

Rey feels the hard line of him pressing against the junction of her thighs and is clearly not offended. Not when she rubs down in a circle so forcefully that he can feel her through their clothes, how the ridge of her pelvis shifts beneath the plump softness of her sex and again he thinks the inelegant, imprecise phrase _I want._ And just like that she knows that he does. He can feel the answering desire, equal and opposite, in her. A shiver he can't suppress travels down his spine and all his thoughts are urgent, half-terrified pleas that he will not fail her. 

His mouth lands in random places on her neck and shoulders as he drops his hands with considerate slowness that borders on hesitation to her waist and the low slung linen pants at her hips. He could rip them as easily as he did her shirt, but that would be pretending that this isn’t deliberate. Instead, he hooks his fingers and pulls just as she’s finding the fastenings at his waist. She’s revealed to him easily while she’s still fussing ineffectively with his trousers, and he makes matters worse by slipping his thumb down to part the folds between her thighs. Touching the wet, soft heat of her he exhales a breath at the same time she whispers some Jakku byword through clenched teeth somewhere near his ear.

He looks down, but can’t see nearly enough to hope he might get his bearings. Beneath the swell of her breasts is a stomach that still looks hungry, a soft bit of hair hidden almost completely by his palm, but the space between her spread thighs remains obscured. He slips his thumb down first, finds the depression where he could enter her. He circles it, contemplating that, while Rey squirms, and tugs at him like he needs him to do more. He tries, presses in up to the last knuckle but despite the little hum she makes under her breath, the continued impatience he feels through the connection tells him it's not enough. 

He thinks the question and she answers it, taking his wrist and guiding his hand up, thumb still dragging against her, until she suddenly jerk and whimpers. He tries to move his hand, but she won’t let him, so he tries a light touch. His thumb makes a slow soft rub over a barely there little knot of flesh that he can feel beneath the surface. As careful as he is it appears to be the first thing he’s ever done that she can’t take. 

He tucks his face into neck and commits to memory -- just in case -- the sounds she makes, the way her body trembles, and how, even now when all he’s doing is pleasing her, she can’t stop herself from grappling with him. She bucks too hard against his hand, threatening to unseat herself from his lap, she grabs his shoulders and her nails dig into his skin. She tugs his face closer to hers so that she can stare him down, only to suddenly pushes him away as if he needs to catch her breath. She struggles against the hold he has on her hips, but he doesn’t let her free herself because her voice is starting to crack. 

She’s whispering that Jakku byword again, under her breath this time, again and again in a rising pitch. Her scavenger upbringing accidentally on full display, but he doesn’t dare bring attention to it. He likes it too much that there’s no artifice, no pretension to her at all when she’s like this, just like when she fights. 

Then, suddenly, she surprises him. Her hips flex twice against his hand, making him work to keep his thumb pressed against where she showed him and her cursing is replaced by the name she chooses to call him. “Ben, Ben, Ben” she whimpers three times before she grabs his wrist and yanks it away from her in spite of his startled protest.

It’s only then he realizes that Rey is shaking, full body shivers from her shoulders to her thighs as she pulls in deep breaths. It’s quite possibly the best thing he’s ever seen, the resolution to all her fierce energy into a sort of calm, finally seeing the end of a fight where she isn’t cheated of a victory or disappointed, but satisfied.

Eventually the shivering dissipates and her breathing evens out, and Rey realizes that he has done nothing more than watch her work through her pleasure since it first overcame her. She puts her hands on each side of his neck, but softly, and kisses him. For a while they try that, being gentle, he skims his hands up her sides, and she kisses him without making any use of her teeth against his lips. It’s pleasant enough, but eventually, mercifully, one of her hands strays down his torso only to find all the fabric stretched across her thighs blocking her way. Rey glances down, and almost looks embarrassed as she tries to shift, first to take her trousers off, then - after realizing that would be impossible to do while remaining on his lap - to hike them back up. 

It’s no good either way, and her shifting on his thighs is more painful than anything. When he grunts in discomfort, she snaps defensively, “There isn’t anywhere to do this but the ground?” He raises an eyebrow at her. In fact, their respective ships are quite close by, but neither one of them would qualify those as neutral ground. 

She doesn’t argue the point, instead craning her neck over his shoulder and asking, “What did you do with that cape you discarded so dramatically?” 

He looks back and sees it lying there a few feet away. Rey, having spotted it as well, starts to move again, to rise up but he’s reluctant to let her go. Already it feels like the excuse they were relying on, the heady moment, their battle suddenly boiling over, is disappearing with every bit of effort they must put into figuring out the practicality of what they are doing. It’s something like the improbable thrill of fighting her to slip his arms beneath her hips, unfold his legs and stand as if she weighs nothing. It catches her off guard; she lets out a small yelp at finding her several feet above the ground, and wraps her arms and legs around him to hang on as he walks her to the requested bit of heavy black fabric. 

He sets one knee to the hard, mud-cracked ground, and places one hand on the small of her back to hold her while he tugs the corners into some semblance of a barrier between them and the dirt. After it’s more or less well enough arranged, he lowers her down carefully. 

Still there’s only so much a few yards of cloth arranged over bare ground can do. As he adjusts his knees seeking some comfortable place to brace against Rey has to shift to avoid some unpleasant lump, and frowns. “I swore to myself when I did this is it would be in a bed.”

Rather than comment on her admission that this is a first for her as well, he says, “Strange thing to promise yourself.”

“Not when you grew up in pile of scraps and sand.” A thought occurs to her, and she shakes her head. “Even with a prince, it's still on the ground, out in the open.”

“I gave you a chance to be a queen,” he reminds her. “You didn't take it.”

She ignores his mention of her rejection, doesn’t even look at his face as she pulls a knee up to her chest to pull off her boot. “You say that like you would taken me to a palace, and not been perfectly fine doing this in the middle of a bunch of fire and dead Praetorians.” 

That Rey would, even as she is undressing beneath him, even after laying the marks of her teeth onto his shoulders, act as if his offer had been easy for her to discard irks him. He won’t allow her that illusion, not now. “That’s what you thought about.” He states it as a plain fact. “For a moment you wanted exactly that.”

Rey looks at him now, stricken, actually exposed. All the feelings and images that have passed between them today and she thought he might not have known that secret. He holds her gaze, and thankfully the shock burns away and leaves nothing but heat behind. The pot boils over again, and rather than contradict him, deny it, she pulls him down to her. 

The ferocity of her kiss is a relief. She understands he did not say that to shame her. The excitement she feels during a fight isn’t something that bothers him, it’s what he clings to. As pure and strong with the light she may be, he knows better. He’s seen her anger, her ruthlessness, her thrill at being the victor. 

He can feel her wanting him again, a warm heavy thrum in the Force that connects them. She’s impatient, pulling his hips between her thighs before realizing they still haven’t yet dealt with his trousers. The fastenings frustrate her by not simply pulling apart at the first tug, and wanting to soothe that he braces himself against one arm planted beside her head and does them for her. Still he’s not completely prepared for how quickly she dives for him, pushing her fingers into the space between his skin and the fabric. He is certainly not ready for the first touch of her hand, questing and unpracticed, to his cock.

For a few moments she’s content to drag her fingers up and down the length while he breathes roughly into her hair and struggles for control. Then she’s withdrawing her hand to shove the waistband down, and draw him to her. “Rey,” he says, voice choked, but she only says “Ben,” back to him, and keeps pulling him closer. 

His cock drags up her inner thigh, and she lifts her hips up in a plea, and suddenly he doesn’t have the sense anymore to hesitate. He enters the slick, wet heat of her so slowly he feels alongside her the exact moment that it’s too much, a second before she cries out. He might have stopped if she didn’t wrap her legs around his hips, stubborn as always, unwilling to admit she can’t. He would go slow, he _would,_ but she won’t let him. She refuses to be satisfied until he is fully seated, his hips pressed to hers. 

He keeps still for as long as he can, trying to wait until she can take a reasonable breath, not the shallow little gasps she’s making, but there have always been limits to his control. A small shallow thrust is so overwhelming that each subsequent shove of his hips gets harder, and Rey’s voice, her face are both on the edge of pleasure and pain, but her legs stay tightly wrapped around, and the only word she has for him is the name he swore to kill and leave behind. 

Like a coward he hides from it, drops down to his elbows, and presses his face into her hair. The change in position gives him even more leverage and she leaves his name behind in favor of wordless shouts, gorgeous, wild noises that he knows he’ll hear echoed in his ears every night after this. Her hands are unforgiving again, one fisting in his hair, the other gripping his back and surely leaving half moon imprints of her nails against his skin. The pain ought to help delay the inevitable, but instead it helps it come too soon.

There's nothing he can do to stop it so he just buries himself as deeply inside her as he can as he spills, and in answer he feels her legs squeeze even more tightly around his sides, holding him there as each shudder that runs through him wrings him out a little more. It feels, at least for the moment, like a staunch refusal of regret no matter the insanity of what they’ve done. 

He keeps the moment as long as he can, but time and biology work against him. He finally withdraws, moving his hips as slowly as possible so that they stay connected until the last possible second. She sighs, reassuringly regretful, as he slips free, and shifts to lay beside her. When she looks up at him, her face is flushed, but her breathing slow and even. As ever, Rey is unrepentant, unafraid.  

He asks again because he can’t stop himself. “Join me.” 

She looks less betrayed than she did the last time, but she still shakes her head. “No.” It hurts less to hear this time. He didn’t truly expect that she would be swayed, but the thought of her leaving remains unbearable for the moment. 

Then she either softens the blow or deigns to tease him. “Not today.” Proving again she’s more clever than him, she laces their fingers together before she makes her own request. “Come with me?” 

All he’d have to do to consent is stay where he is. He lets himself feel that for a few breaths, then says, “Not today.” 

Even after all that they remain at an impasse. 

Her chest rises and falls in a tired sigh, then she’s pulling away from him, standing up on unsteady legs. He bears it as well as he can, and doesn’t reach for her. 

It’s a ridiculous business, getting dressed, and even she can’t make pulling on her trousers and boots look graceful. Eventually she leaves him to walk the few feet over to where this all started, and bends down to grab her shirt. She holds it up, considering whether it could be saved, before discarding it and picking up his tunic. When she puts it on it hangs, loose and billowing, from her shoulders even after she secures it with her belt. She puts her hand out, and her lightsaber flies easily to it from where it had been lying, hastily discarded in the dirt. 

Rather than continue to stare at the unfamiliar intimacy of seeing something that belongs to him on another person, he calls his own lightsaber to him and starts to pull himself together. She brings his jacket to him, perhaps as an apology for taking his shirt. The wool is rough without the added layer, but it’s fine, welcome even. The irritation grounds him. 

While he deals with his belt, Rey pulls her hair free from its tie to recapture it more neatly, and that appears to signal some final shift in their circumstances. Once finished, she looks at him and her hand drifts unconsciously to the lightsaber on her belt to make sure it’s there. He glances down and she sees him notice. 

“First Order ships will be arriving soon from the direction of Eufornis Major,” he says, pulling on his gloves. “I’d go the other way.” She has the nerve to look suspicious before she nods.

He clenches his fists to check that the gloves are well enough on and then releases his grip. Since the only ships coming their way are his own, he has the ability to wait patiently for Rey to turn away first. It doesn't take her nearly as long as he would like. 

He's swallowing down that misery, preparing to turn back to his own ship, when Rey does something she has never done before. She looks back. It’s only for a moment, but the image of her face turned over her shoulder, looking for an answer to some yet unasked question, is another thing he’ll cling to while he waits.


End file.
